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We've still got people like Horacio Gutierrez (Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel) making statements like this:

...Open innovation is only possible through the licensing of third party IP rights, which ensures that those who develop the building blocks that make a new technology possible are properly compensated for their investments in research and development. After all, technology just doesn’t appear, fully-developed, from Zeus’s head. It requires lots of hard work and resources to create....

Mr. Gutierrez would do well to choose better classical allusions. He refers to the birth myth of Athena, who sprung fully formed from Zeus' head, and uses it to explain how such a process could never happen with so-called Intellectual Property.

Athena was the goddess of knowledge and learning, and her appearance, fully formed, from the mind of Zeus was a deliberate reference to the nature of wisdom. So, in effect, Gutierrez has said, "Great ideas don't just spring fully formed from the collective mind, as described in this story about ideas springing fully formed from the collective mind."

Hate to tell you, Mr. Gutierrez, but apparently they do. And have done throughout recorded human history.

(Yes, I know: his real point was that technology costs money. But that's what hardware sales and services are for.)

I'm always glad to hear about mono being used less on Linux.

Yup. I've got nothing against people using it, but I completely agree with the FSF and would never use or install Mono myself.

We've still got people like Horacio Gutierrez (Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel) making statements like this:

...smartphones are a product of the ‘open innovation’ paradigm – device manufacturers do not do all of their development in-house, but add their own innovations to those of others to create a product that users want. Open innovation is only possible through the licensing of third party IP rights, which ensures that those who develop the building blocks that make a new technology possible are properly compensated for their investments in research and development. After all, technology just doesn’t appear, fully-developed, from Zeus’s head. It requires lots of hard work and resources to create.
...now the industry is in the process of sorting out what royalties will be for the software stack, which now represents the principal value proposition for smartphones. In the next few years, as the IP situation settles in this space and licensing takes off, we will see the patent royalties applicable to the smartphone software stack settle at a level that reflects the increasing importance software has as a portion of the overall value of the device.
(16 March 2010)

Do you still think Microsoft will allow competitors like Google (Android) and Nokia/Intel (MeeGo) to use Mono's .NET implementations for free?

They were discussing about the deal with Yahoo and why it doesn't hurt the market or Google. It really makes sense too - Google gets many magnitudes more search query data than their rivals. Long-tail keyword phrases are invaluable data and give a huge advantage for Google to taylor their search results.

Huh, that's odd. From the original blog post:

Over the past few months Microsoft, too, has met with the DOJ and the European Commission. The subject of our meetings has been the competition law review, now completed, of the search partnership between Yahoo! and Microsoft. As you might expect, the competition officials asked us a lot of questions about competition with Google--since that is the focus of the partnership. We told them what we know about how Google is doing business.

What does Google's method of doing business have to do with their Yahoo! merger? In addition to that:

In this instance, there has been no shortage of affected voices. A quick Internet search will surface the growing concerns that have been raised by upstart innovators such as Ciao (owned by Microsoft) ...

Sounds to me like Microsoft has been complaining to the DoJ and EC.

Furthermore the post doesn't really focus on one thing and also brings up the Google Books deal for some odd reason. I mean, if they're complaining about it, that's fine. Just say what you think is wrong and be done with it. From that point on the DoJ or EC will take action if they need to. But I bet that won't be what will happen. I bet they'll bring this up over and over again and fun startups that died "because of Google" (like Ciao) to take legal action against the behemoth. Seems to be Microsoft's modus operandi.

It really makes sense too - Google gets many magnitudes more search query data than their rivals.

It makes sense alright. It makes sense that Microsoft is upset that Google is doing so well and so they've got to try to be the biggest thorn in Google's side as possible. The fact that Google is smart enough to use its own resources to be a better search engine is violating anti-trust laws? Please! Should I complain that auto manufacturers have access to huge factories and production lines and I have none so it's anti-trust that I cannot enter the automobile market? Should we demand that information technology companies hand over their infrastructure to their competitors in the name of the Sherman Act? Absurd.

Google’s public response to this growing regulatory concern has been to point elsewhere—at Microsoft. Google is telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.

Time to get the popcorn ...

A 3% marketshare for Bing is hardly anything to get excited about. Bing is seriously terrible compared to Google. Try any other language than english and you're fucked.

Also, Microsoft is terrible at privacy compared to Google. You may be too young to remember Google fighting off a subpoena to hand over user information, while Yahoo and Microsoft caved:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39248192,00.htm
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2006/01/19

Also, where was microsoft when Google was making a stand in China? Yup, nowhere...

Lastly, you mention that microsoft is deleting user data within 6 months as if it's a policy used today. If you read their own announcement, what they're saying is that they'll remove IP addresses from queries after 6 months and remaining cross-session IDs after 18 months. But they plan to implement this policy a year to a year and a half from now!

http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2010/01/19/microsoft-advances-search-privacy-with-bing.aspx

Well Apple's little update-jacking fiasco seems to have paid off. The screenshot shows that Safari is the third most popular Windows browser, in front of Chrome and Opera. I don't have any problem with Safari (fast, small, standards compliant) but I wonder if this is all an Apple plan... and they seriously need to just use Windows widgets and styles instead of imposing their Cocoa look on the windows environment..

So, do give me a link to the EC ruling that says what Microsoft is supposed to be doing as a consequence of their "bad behaviour." Oh wait, the EC hasn't delivered it yet. Ergo, you're more than a little presumptuous.

Ask and you shall receive.

In January 2009 the Commission sent Microsoft a âoeStatement of Objections.â In it the Commission advised Microsoft of its preliminary view that the inclusion of Web browsing software in Windows violates European competition law. The Commission said in this document that it intends to impose a fine for this.

http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2009/06/11/working-to-fulfill-our-legal-obligations-in-europe-for-windows-7.aspx

'My question is if they are removing the blue E icon or actually removing the rendering engine? My guess is the former. The way things stand, I imagine many apps would be impossible to run without the rendering engine.'

The article is now linking to an MS blog:

http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2009/06/11/working-to-fulfill-our-legal-obligations-in-europe-for-windows-7.aspx

which states:

'Most importantly, the E versions of Windows 7 will continue to provide all of the underlying platform functionality of the operating system--applications designed for Windows will run just as well on an E version as on other versions of Windows 7.'